The Underground Railroad eBook

Even at this late date, it may perhaps
afford Mr. R. a degree of satisfaction to know
what became of Richard; but if this should not
be the case, Richard’s children, or mother, or
father, if they are living, may possibly see these
pages, and thereby be made glad by learning of
Richard’s wisdom as a traveler, in the terrible
days of slave-hunting. Consequently here is what
was recorded of him, April 3d, 1857, at the Underground
Rail Road Station, just before a free ticket was
tendered him for Canada. “Richard is
thirty-three years of age, small of stature, dark
color, smart and resolute. He was owned by
Captain Tucker, of the United States Navy, from
whom he fled.” He was “tired of serving,
and wanted to marry,” was the cause of his escape.
He had no complaint of bad treatment to make against
his owner; indeed he said, that he had been “used
well all his life.” Nevertheless, Richard
felt that this Underground Rail Road was the “greatest
road he ever saw.”

When the war broke out, Richard
girded on his knapsack and went
to help Uncle Sam humble Richmond
and break the yoke.

All these persons journeyed together from Loudon Co.,
Va. on horseback and in a carriage for more than one
hundred miles. Availing themselves of a holiday
and their master’s horses and carriage, they
as deliberately started for Canada, as though they
had never been taught that it was their duty, as servants,
to “obey their masters.” In this
particular showing a most utter disregard of the interest
of their “kind-hearted and indulgent owners.”
They left home on Monday, Christmas Eve, 1855, under
the leadership of Frank Wanzer, and arrived in Columbia
the following Wednesday at one o’clock.
As willfully as they had thus made their way along,
they had not found it smooth sailing by any means.
The biting frost and snow rendered their travel anything
but agreeable. Nor did they escape the gnawings
of hunger, traveling day and night. And whilst
these “articles” were in the very act of
running away with themselves and their kind master’s
best horses and carriage—­when about one
hundred miles from home, in the neighborhood of Cheat
river, Maryland, they were attacked by “six
white men, and a boy,” who, doubtless, supposing
that their intentions were of a “wicked and
unlawful character” felt it to be their duty
in kindness to their masters, if not to the travelers
to demand of them an account of themselves. In
other words, the assailants positively commanded the
fugitives to “show what right” they possessed,
to be found in a condition apparently so unwarranted.